This is so funny lol, what exactly is authoritarianism, then? You’re just short circuiting because the most default liberal argument doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. You don’t have to run away from the conversation just because you have a different definition of authoritarianism. As much as we may have different definitions, we live in the same reality, we can discuss the same ground truths of what “authoritarianism” means to you and how we conceptualize those things in different ways.
You seem the most reasonable here, but I see a problem continuing this argument if we can’t agree that there are fundamental differences between what is commonly intended as authoritarian government (let’s say Russia, Turkey, Iran, China, …) and the average western country.
It does not mean that western countries are perfect, nor that none shows sign of authoritarianism (Trump’s US), nor that nothing should change, or anything of the things I never said in this thread.
You don’t have to run away from the conversation just because you have a different definition of authoritarianism.
Contrary to what you may believe, I replied to this thread to have some fun and a chat around what I find a terrible meme. What I learned is that I should simply avoid any interaction with anyone writing from hexbear since you guys approach politics in a very identitarian way which is something I find dull.
No offence intended, but continue without me. Bye!
The US, which has an incarceration rate roughly 5x that of China and the single largest prison population in the world, is notably absent from your authoritarian examples (other than blaming it on Trump of course lmao)
The US, which has an incarceration rate roughly 5x that of China and the single largest prison population in the world, is notably absent from your authoritarian examples (other than blaming it on Trump of course lmao)
we can’t agree that there are fundamental differences between what is commonly intended as authoritarian government (let’s say Russia, Turkey, Iran, China, …) and the average western country.
Yeah there’s differences. In Western countries, a lot of wealthy white people can just chill while their governments enact tremendous violence against minorities to sustain their quality of life. In Russia, Turkey, Iran, China, and other peripheral or semiperipheral countries, the state has to deal with the contradictions head-on instead of exporting them elsewhere, so they have to be more repressive. That’s a real difference, but it makes me think that the Western countries are worse than the “authoritarian governments” you list.
In fact, the way you choose Trump’s US as the turning point that supposedly shows that authoritarianism just now appeared out of nowhere, shows how one-sided your view of history and politics is. Now the US turned authoritarian. Not when they were literally dousing Mexican immigrants in kerosene in 1916 or doing Jim Crow segregation that inspired the Nazis.
Society is constantly evolving with huge differences even noticeable in a lifespan. It means that obviously 100+ years ago, something unacceptable for modern standards was the norm. It also means that it’s ridiculous to bring up events of 100+ years ago to criticize the modern world.
To make an example: 80 years ago Europe was literally bombing Germany and Italy and their nazi-fascist regimes, but just a couple of decades later they were forming an alliance that eventually led to the EU. Even if today there are still nazi-fascist movements in the EU, and neo-fascist parties are even leading countries, one must be blinded by ideology to deny that there was an improvement. Improvement does not imply perfection.
Trump is a step back and I find his term horrifying. However, even in Trump’s America, even with all the regressions in terms of civil rights, even with the changes to shift even more money towards billionaires, even with what ICE is doing, even with all of that, it remains a country where the vast majority lives a better life than in the large part of the present and past world. Failing to acknowledge that in the name of pure ideology is simply nonsensical. “US = authoritarian regime” or “they exploit the south” may have some truth in it, but it’s such an extreme position to be unreasonable and, frankly, childish. It works only here, in a bubble in a corner of internet where everyone reinforce each other’s ideas and violently reject any different opinion.
Why insist that the US being authoritarian and exploitative of the global South is an unreasonable position? The way I see it, you’re just trying really hard to make this artificial separation between “authoritarian” countries that aren’t even defined in any coherent way, and democratic Western countries. What is it about the US, with the highest prison population in the world, a rampant surveillance state, and police violence every single day that is better than a country like Iran?
In this comment you give the reason “it remains a country where the vast majority lives a better life than in the large part of the present and past world.” I’m not going to deny that.[1] But that has nothing to do with “authoritarianism.” The US could be the wealthiest country in the world where 70% of the population lives much better lives than the vast majority of the rest of the world. That still wouldn’t make the US a country that isn’t authoritarian, so really when you attack countries like Iran or Turkey for being authoritarian but defend the US, you are using a double standard. If you’re authoritarian and rich, that’s fine, but authoritarian and poor is a cautionary tale?
Furthermore, in the case of Europe, you’re failing to appreciate the long arc here. You’re talking about the neo-fascist parties (I assume you mean parties like AfD and Orban’s party in Hungary) as if they were uniquely the problem. But we can all plainly observe that the liberal, so-called “democratic” European parties have no problem at all committing genocide. They have no problem at all beating up protesters who call for an end to military aid to Israel. The ease with which they arrived at this position, of using violence to shut down popular support for ending genocide, should make you question whether one really has to be “blinded by ideology” to say that authoritarianism is just as present in Western “democratic” countries as it is in the developing world. Are you really confident that as climate change gets worse and worse, European “democracies” aren’t going to go fascist and start putting climate refugees in concentration camps, instead of drowning them in the Mediterranean?
Some people in my instance have been trying to argue against that point, but I honestly think that there’s a contradiction many leftists are bad at confronting, where they simultaneously believe that capitalism is an absolute evil that has never done anything good for anyone except for the top 0.001%, but at the same time the reason people in the imperial core accept capitalism is because they benefit from capitalism? ↩︎
What is it about the US, with the highest prison population in the world, a rampant surveillance state, and police violence every single day that is better than a country like Iran?
You can’t be serious. Iran checks all the marks of a dictatorship: there is an unelected leader, it’s a theocracy, there’s full control on media, they arrest journalists and whoever opposes to leader, they repress the protests with violence…
I’m not a fan of the US, but it would be dishonest to put them on the same level.
Women lost the right to abortions in the US very recently because the religious ghouls in the Supreme Court, who are all unelected leaders, decided against it. This is also the reason the US has extremely weak environmental protections, and many other problems that plague US politics.
there’s full control on media, they arrest journalists and whoever opposes to leader, they repress the protests with violence…
Other than full control of media, how does this not describe the US?
Edit: just to pre-empt the obvious counterargument that in the US you can oppose the government without being arrested: yes, you can, as long as you aren’t speaking out in a dangerous way. The 6 Ferguson organizers who all died under mysterious circumstances should be evidence that if you do speak out in a way that the state deems unacceptable, they’ll just kill you. Hopefully you can see how in Iran, not everyone who ever says anything against their government is jailed (we even have Hexbear users from Iran that have posted things that are critical of their government). The thing that would get you jailed is if you destabilize the country with your speech. Every single state in the world will have you jailed for destabilizing it, the only difference is how hard to destabilize each state is.
I think that we can’t agree on the very basic definitions here.
I wish you good luck. Bye!
This is so funny lol, what exactly is authoritarianism, then? You’re just short circuiting because the most default liberal argument doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. You don’t have to run away from the conversation just because you have a different definition of authoritarianism. As much as we may have different definitions, we live in the same reality, we can discuss the same ground truths of what “authoritarianism” means to you and how we conceptualize those things in different ways.
You seem the most reasonable here, but I see a problem continuing this argument if we can’t agree that there are fundamental differences between what is commonly intended as authoritarian government (let’s say Russia, Turkey, Iran, China, …) and the average western country.
It does not mean that western countries are perfect, nor that none shows sign of authoritarianism (Trump’s US), nor that nothing should change, or anything of the things I never said in this thread.
Contrary to what you may believe, I replied to this thread to have some fun and a chat around what I find a terrible meme. What I learned is that I should simply avoid any interaction with anyone writing from hexbear since you guys approach politics in a very identitarian way which is something I find dull.
No offence intended, but continue without me. Bye!
Lol: “there’s no point having this discussion if you’re not going to agree I’m right!”
Why are liberals such massive cowards?
The US, which has an incarceration rate roughly 5x that of China and the single largest prison population in the world, is notably absent from your authoritarian examples (other than blaming it on Trump of course lmao)
That’s because the US is not an authoritarian regime: there can be regular elections, there is freedom of speech, separation of powers, etc. It’s true that it’s far from being perfect https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-states/freedom-world/2024
Now please don’t reply that it’s a single-party state with two options. It’s an old joke, it has some truth in it, but it’s just a joke.
Yeah there’s differences. In Western countries, a lot of wealthy white people can just chill while their governments enact tremendous violence against minorities to sustain their quality of life. In Russia, Turkey, Iran, China, and other peripheral or semiperipheral countries, the state has to deal with the contradictions head-on instead of exporting them elsewhere, so they have to be more repressive. That’s a real difference, but it makes me think that the Western countries are worse than the “authoritarian governments” you list.
In fact, the way you choose Trump’s US as the turning point that supposedly shows that authoritarianism just now appeared out of nowhere, shows how one-sided your view of history and politics is. Now the US turned authoritarian. Not when they were literally dousing Mexican immigrants in kerosene in 1916 or doing Jim Crow segregation that inspired the Nazis.
Don’t put words that are not mine in my mouth.
Society is constantly evolving with huge differences even noticeable in a lifespan. It means that obviously 100+ years ago, something unacceptable for modern standards was the norm. It also means that it’s ridiculous to bring up events of 100+ years ago to criticize the modern world.
To make an example: 80 years ago Europe was literally bombing Germany and Italy and their nazi-fascist regimes, but just a couple of decades later they were forming an alliance that eventually led to the EU. Even if today there are still nazi-fascist movements in the EU, and neo-fascist parties are even leading countries, one must be blinded by ideology to deny that there was an improvement. Improvement does not imply perfection.
Trump is a step back and I find his term horrifying. However, even in Trump’s America, even with all the regressions in terms of civil rights, even with the changes to shift even more money towards billionaires, even with what ICE is doing, even with all of that, it remains a country where the vast majority lives a better life than in the large part of the present and past world. Failing to acknowledge that in the name of pure ideology is simply nonsensical. “US = authoritarian regime” or “they exploit the south” may have some truth in it, but it’s such an extreme position to be unreasonable and, frankly, childish. It works only here, in a bubble in a corner of internet where everyone reinforce each other’s ideas and violently reject any different opinion.
Why insist that the US being authoritarian and exploitative of the global South is an unreasonable position? The way I see it, you’re just trying really hard to make this artificial separation between “authoritarian” countries that aren’t even defined in any coherent way, and democratic Western countries. What is it about the US, with the highest prison population in the world, a rampant surveillance state, and police violence every single day that is better than a country like Iran?
In this comment you give the reason “it remains a country where the vast majority lives a better life than in the large part of the present and past world.” I’m not going to deny that.[1] But that has nothing to do with “authoritarianism.” The US could be the wealthiest country in the world where 70% of the population lives much better lives than the vast majority of the rest of the world. That still wouldn’t make the US a country that isn’t authoritarian, so really when you attack countries like Iran or Turkey for being authoritarian but defend the US, you are using a double standard. If you’re authoritarian and rich, that’s fine, but authoritarian and poor is a cautionary tale?
Furthermore, in the case of Europe, you’re failing to appreciate the long arc here. You’re talking about the neo-fascist parties (I assume you mean parties like AfD and Orban’s party in Hungary) as if they were uniquely the problem. But we can all plainly observe that the liberal, so-called “democratic” European parties have no problem at all committing genocide. They have no problem at all beating up protesters who call for an end to military aid to Israel. The ease with which they arrived at this position, of using violence to shut down popular support for ending genocide, should make you question whether one really has to be “blinded by ideology” to say that authoritarianism is just as present in Western “democratic” countries as it is in the developing world. Are you really confident that as climate change gets worse and worse, European “democracies” aren’t going to go fascist and start putting climate refugees in concentration camps, instead of drowning them in the Mediterranean?
Some people in my instance have been trying to argue against that point, but I honestly think that there’s a contradiction many leftists are bad at confronting, where they simultaneously believe that capitalism is an absolute evil that has never done anything good for anyone except for the top 0.001%, but at the same time the reason people in the imperial core accept capitalism is because they benefit from capitalism? ↩︎
You can’t be serious. Iran checks all the marks of a dictatorship: there is an unelected leader, it’s a theocracy, there’s full control on media, they arrest journalists and whoever opposes to leader, they repress the protests with violence…
I’m not a fan of the US, but it would be dishonest to put them on the same level.
Women lost the right to abortions in the US very recently because the religious ghouls in the Supreme Court, who are all unelected leaders, decided against it. This is also the reason the US has extremely weak environmental protections, and many other problems that plague US politics.
Other than full control of media, how does this not describe the US?
Edit: just to pre-empt the obvious counterargument that in the US you can oppose the government without being arrested: yes, you can, as long as you aren’t speaking out in a dangerous way. The 6 Ferguson organizers who all died under mysterious circumstances should be evidence that if you do speak out in a way that the state deems unacceptable, they’ll just kill you. Hopefully you can see how in Iran, not everyone who ever says anything against their government is jailed (we even have Hexbear users from Iran that have posted things that are critical of their government). The thing that would get you jailed is if you destabilize the country with your speech. Every single state in the world will have you jailed for destabilizing it, the only difference is how hard to destabilize each state is.
Bye!